" Another,
in Lugano, declares "The sound of this bell vanquishes
tempests, repels demons, and summons men." Another, at the
Cathedral of Erfurt, declares that it can "ward off lightning
and malignant demons." A peal in the Jesuit church at the
university town of Pont-a-Mousson bore the words, "They praise
God, put to flight the clouds, affright the demons, and call the
people." This is dated 1634. Another bell in that part of France
declares, "It is I who dissipate the thunders"(_Ego sum qui
dissipo tonitrua_).[345b]
Another, in one of the forest cantons of Switzerland, bears a
doggerel couplet, which may be thus translated:
"On the devil my spite I'll vent,
And, God helping, bad weather prevent."[345c]
Very common were inscriptions embodying this doctrine in sonorous Latin.
Naturally, then, there grew up a ritual for the consecration of
bells. Knollys, in his quaint translation of the old chronicler
Sleidan, gives us the usage in the simple English of the middle
of the sixteenth century:
"In lyke sorte [as churches] are the belles used.
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